Brookhaven Lecture

<p>One of the world's premiere nuclear research facilities, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven Lab is just completing its eighth year of physics operation. During the past eight years, RHIC's primary physics program has emphasized the creation, observation and explanation of nuclear matter created at temperatures and densities that last existed in the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.</p> <p>RHIC was built to study the strong force, which holds quarks and gluons together within the nucleus of an atom, with the goal of observing a plasma of quarks and gluons freed from the atomic nucleus. The new state of matter that was created, however, was quite different.</p> <p>To find out "What We Have Learned So Far at RHIC," attend the 434th Brookhaven Lecture, to be presented by Senior Physicist Edward O'Brien of the Physics Department on Wednesday, March 19th, at 4 p.m. in Berkner Hall. In his talk, Dr. O'Brien will discuss what RHIC scientists expected versus what they discovered, and how this finding both challenges existing theory and provides an opportunity to understand the strong force better.</p> <p>With a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois, Edward O'Brien camed to BNL in May 1987. Since 1992, he has been a member of the PHENIX experiment, one of RHIC's two large detectors, and, for the past seven years, the director of PHENIX operations.</p>